The Continuing Misadventures of Stereotype Threat
15th November 2020
Since the 1990s, “stereotype threat” — the assertion that the reason politically privileged groups score worse on high stakes tests is because they perversely make themselves live down to pernicious stereotypes — has been far more popular than vindicated by evidence from low stakes tests. It’s easy to get papers upholding stereotype threat published, while the many failed replications tend to be tossed into the circular file.
Black people could ace the SATs but doing so would be ‘acting white’.